by Matt Ruff
It wasn’t. The pages were full of that dense, tiny type that you know is going to be boring even before you try to read it. I started flipping through the book to see if there were any pictures (there weren’t), and somebody kicked the back of my chair.
Phil had materialized in the seat behind me. Not the grown-up Phil, who I liked; the ten-year-old Phil, who’d bugged the shit out of me back before I was sent away. “Knock it off,” I warned him. I turned back to the textbook, and Phil kicked my chair again.
“Knock it off!” I whirled around, brandishing the book with both hands. But Phil was gone.
A sharp rapping came from the front of the classroom. “Jane,” Annie said. “We need you in the present day.”
“Yes ma’am,” I heard myself say.
“The subjects to be covered in today’s lesson include the organization’s command structure, the proper handling of the NC gun, and the use of the Daily Jumble as a covert communication channel. Please turn to page one thousand, four hundred and sixty-five…”
Long dream. The worst part of it was, unlike a real classroom, I couldn’t just drift off, because I already had.
When I finally woke up, it was nighttime. Annie was over by the window, looking out; she heard me fumbling for the bedside lamp and said, “Leave it off.”
I joined her at the window. Across the street from the hotel was a model-railroad store; there were apartments above it, and in one unit on the second floor, I could see a thirtysomething guy walking around in his underwear. “That’s him?”
“That’s him.” Annie gave a nudge to a shoebox on the windowsill. “This came for you.”
My NC gun. I took it out, hefted it, and did a couple quick integrity checks that I’d learned about in dream class. Once I’d verified it was in working order, Annie said: “Now let’s review…Suppose I asked you to shoot him from here. Could you?”
On the MI setting, the NC gun’s effective range is about fifty feet; on the CI setting, around half that. “I could probably nail him with a heart attack,” I said. “But I’d need to open this window, and get him to open one of his.”
“Why not just shoot him through the glass?”
“Doesn’t work. The gun can penetrate ordinary clothing, but anything more substantial will either absorb the shot or bounce it in a random direction. Reflective surfaces are bad.”
“And another important implication of that is…?”
“Unless I’m so close that I can’t miss, I never want to shoot at anybody standing in front of a reflective surface, either.”
“Good,” Annie said. “You were listening.”
“Yeah, so now I’ve got a question: are you asking me to shoot him? Because I could just go over there and ring his buzzer.”
“Not tonight.” She handed me a wireless headset. “This will put you in touch with the rest of the surveillance team. If it looks like he’s going to leave the apartment, let them know. Otherwise, just keep an eye on him.” She went over to the bed. “Wake me at dawn, or sooner if something happens. And Jane—”
“Yeah, I know. Pay attention.”
Annie didn’t go to sleep right away. I heard her praying, and then, for a while, she talked to William. Maybe a half hour after she finally got quiet, the lights went out at Arlo’s place. After that it was just me in the dark, with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs.
I was tired. I know that probably sounds strange seeing as I’d slept the whole day away, but the thing about dream school is, it’s not restful. Also I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and my feet hurt from the walking. I decided to sit down for a while, only there weren’t any chairs in the room, so I ended up on the floor with my back to the wall beneath the windowsill. At first I was good about poking my head up every few minutes to check on Arlo’s apartment, but pretty soon I was nodding.
I started awake in gray dawn light. A fog had come in off the bay while I’d slept; through the haze, I could see that Arlo’s windows were still dark, but whether that meant he was still in bed or had already gone out was anybody’s guess.
What did you do?
Said “Oh, shit!” a few dozen times. Then, for variety, I tried calling myself a stupid bitch. I had some other choice phrases lined up, but before I could get to them, someone came out the front door of Arlo’s building. In the fog, all I could make out was a figure, but this person, whoever he or she was, was carrying some kind of case.
I tried calling it in to the surveillance team, but all I got for an answer was static. The figure with the case went into an alley beside the model-railroad store. I gave the headset one more try, then grabbed my gun and ran downstairs.
By the time I got to the alley, the figure was nowhere to be seen. The headset went on hissing static. I was going to look for a pay phone, but then something else caught my eye, something that seemed out of place in the dinginess of the alley: a china doll with a bright yellow bonnet. It was jammed into a dumpster, with its arm jutting out over the lip like it wanted to shake hands.
Without thinking, I started to reach for it, only realizing at the last second how stupid that was. I backed up, grabbed a rock, wound up to throw it, realized that that was pretty dumb too, and then just stood there indecisively.
“What are you doing?”
True had come up behind me, silent in the fog. I nearly brained him.
“What are you doing?” he repeated.
I looked at the rock in my hand like, How did that get there?, and tossed it aside as casually as I could. “I thought I saw Arlo come this way. I tried to call it in, but the headset’s broken or something.”
“It’s not broken. The surveillance team got tired of your snoring and turned off the receiver.”
Oops. “Why didn’t they just wake me up?”
“They tried. The volume only goes up so high.”
“Oh…Well look, I’m sorry about that, but Arlo—”
“Dexter is still in bed.”
“How do you know?”
“How do you think?”
“You bugged his apartment?”
“Of course.”
“Well if you’ve got him covered, what do you need me watching him for?”
“Are you sure this is a line of questioning you want to pursue?”
“When you put it that way, no.”
“Good. Now get back upstairs, and try not to fall asleep until you’re told to.”
He started to turn away.
“True.”
I thought I heard him sigh. “Yes?”
“Annie,” I said. “What’s her deal?”
“You’ve already worked out most of it, I’m sure. She had a young son, and a house on the bay. One day, she let her attention wander.”
“The kid drowned.”
“Yes.”
“And now she’s insane.”
“Not clinically,” True said. “She was a grammar school teacher, but she’d studied to be a psychologist. In the aftermath of her son’s death, she used her knowledge of mental illness to construct a refuge for herself.”
“She pretends to be crazy to keep from going crazy?”
“It’s slightly more complicated than that, but essentially, yes. Spend enough time with her, and you’ll notice she only acts out when it’s safe or advantageous to do so. Where sanity is required, she’s sane. She’s very dependable.”
“Yeah, I got that memo. ‘God keeps me focused’?”
“You don’t believe in God.”
“No. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize to me. But I’ll tell you a secret about God: if you’re careful not to ask too much of Him, it doesn’t really matter whether He exists. Annie doesn’t ask much.”
“Just three squares a day and a cardboard roof over her head, right?”
“She wants to be useful. It would be very easy for someone in Annie’s position to spend the rest of her life paralyzed by guilt, but she wants her remaining time to count for something. The organization gives her a purp
ose; God holds her to it.”
“And you’re not worried about the Almighty countermanding your orders during a mission?”
“If I feel a need to worry about disobedient operatives,” True said, “Annie won’t be the first one who comes to mind.”
“Yeah, yeah, OK…Point taken.”
“I hope so.”
“Seriously, True, I get it.” I reached up and tapped my headset. “So can I order breakfast on this thing?”
It was actually a couple more hours before I got to eat. After I went back and woke Annie, she took forever in the bathroom—I guess when you live in a box, you can’t get enough of indoor plumbing—and nearly as long choosing an ensemble from the collection of rags in her backpack. I was good, though: I only got a little impatient. Finally we made it out the door and went to Silverman’s Deli, where I pigged out on bagels and lox.
From there, we fell into a routine: we went for a post-breakfast walk; Annie muttered; I listened. Then, back to the hotel, where I had dream class while Annie—the waking Annie—took another shower. Then, all-night sentry duty. Then, more Silverman’s. Rinse and repeat, for seven days straight. By the time we were done, I knew everything a Bad Monkeys operative is supposed to know.
On the morning of the eighth day, Annie told me I’d completed the initial phase of my training. “Go home and relax,” she said. “We meet back here in seventy-two hours.”
“What about Arlo?”
“If we’re very lucky, he’ll have been taken care of by then. If not…you’ll want to be sharp.”
I went home, crashed, and slept for a day. I woke up starving, but the thought of more smoked salmon made me queasy, so I gave the deli a rest and went to this pub I knew instead. I was working on my second plate of cheese fries when Phil showed up.
“Those must be really good,” he said. “You look happy.”
“It’s not the fries. I got a new job.”
“Is it the one you’ve been looking for?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I think it might be. If I don’t fuck it up.”
Did you tell him what the job was?
No. I could have, I mean, Phil’s probably the only person I know who’d have believed me, but…no. I just called it a “public service” job, stayed vague on the details, and Phil, he knew enough not to push. He smiled like he was proud of me, though—like he would have been proud of me, if I’d told him everything.
I did tell him about Annie. I called her my supervisor and had her living in a homeless shelter instead of a cemetery, but other than that I stuck pretty close to the truth. “She’s growing on me. At first I didn’t want to be around her, but now that I know the crazy thing is mostly an act—well, not an act, exactly, more like a coping strategy—I’m starting to like her…The God thing still bugs me, though.”
“Why?”
“Besides the fact that it’s just stupid? I can’t see giving the time of day to a God who let your kid drown.”
“Well,” said Phil, “it wasn’t God’s responsibility to watch the kid. It was hers.”
“What, and God’s too busy to pick up the slack the one time she takes her eyes off him?”
“Was it just the one time?”
“Shut up. Annie’s not like that. She wasn’t a bad mother.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know her, OK? She’s a little weird, but she’s not a bad person. This organization we work for, they’ve got standards. They wouldn’t keep her on if she was bad.”
“Maybe she’s not a bad person now. But before…?”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure she used to be a real terror. Hey, here’s a theory, maybe God killed her kid as a character-building exercise: ‘Go on, Billy, jump in the bay, it’ll help Mommy get her priorities straight…’ How’s that sound?”
“I don’t know. Could be.”
“Could be? Are you fucking serious?”
“Or maybe it’s the job. You say you’re doing important work. But would this woman even be a part of that, if her son hadn’t—”
“Jesus, Phil, are you trying to piss me off?”
He swore he wasn’t, but he kept doing it anyway, and pretty soon I told him to take a hike. Goddamned Phil…Nine times out of ten, you know, talking to him made me feel better, but that tenth time left me wondering why I even bothered. I spent the rest of my break alone at home, sacked out on the couch with a bottle and my post-Ganesh drug stash, watching spy shows on cable.
When I reported back to work, Arlo Dexter was still alive. Eleven a.m. on a weekday morning, Annie and I were watching from the Rose & Cross as he opened up the model-railroad store.
“So is that his shop?”
“He runs it,” Annie said. “But his grandmother holds the lease and pays for the inventory. She covers the rent on his apartment, as well.”
“Generous grandma. Did the organization check her out?”
“Yes. She’s not evil, just lonely.”
“What about employees?”
“He doesn’t have any. Not many customers, either. He’s not what you’d call a people person.”
“So basically the store is just a private playroom for him.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“And what’s our play? We just hang out while Arlo fools with his trains?”
“That depends,” Annie said. “I spoke with True earlier this morning, and he told me that Cost-Benefits is divided on how to proceed. Some members feel that we should continue to watch and wait. Others, including True, think that this is taking too long. They’d like to provoke Dexter into making a move, if we can come up with some way of doing that.”
“You mean if I can come up with some way of doing it, right? Is this my final exam?”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“Yeah, actually…Did your son like model trains?”
Her expression got all brittle again, but then she said: “Model planes. Billy wanted to be a pilot when he grew up.”
“OK, planes, same difference. The point is, you’ve been to a hobby shop.”
“We went every Saturday.”
“And the geeks who ran the place, you remember how they reacted to having a woman in the store?”
She nodded, seeing where I was going. “Yes.”
“Yeah—and those guys probably liked having customers.”
Annie turned back to the window and looked down at Arlo’s shop. “You want me to go in?”
“No,” I said. “Let me mess with him. I’ve got a mood I feel like sharing.”
A taxi sat just up the block from the model-railroad store, its driver working the Daily Jumble and picking at a carton of chicken vindaloo that had come from Catering’s kitchens. If Arlo made a break for it, the taxi would help track him, or, if necessary, run him down. That was the plan, anyway, but there was a wrinkle. As I crossed the street, this black guy approached the cab and tried to hire it, and when the driver belatedly flipped on his off-duty lamp, the black guy took it personally. They were arguing as I slipped inside Arlo’s shop.
The front of the store was packed with shelves and display cases, but the back was given over to a huge train layout, complete with model scenery and a scale-model town. Arlo stood in front of the layout reading a magazine, while toy passenger and freight trains made an endless circuit of the town.
I gave the door a good slam. Arlo jumped and dropped his magazine.
“Hi there!” I said, in a loud and cheery stupid-chick voice. “Do you sell trains here?”
Instead of answering, Arlo just stared, wide-eyed, as if he expected me to whip out a gun and shoot him on the spot. That should have been a hint, but I was way too pleased by his reaction to pick up on it.
“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to scare you…But can you help me out? I need to get my brother a birthday present…Oh, neat!” On a shelf to my right was a stack of boxed miniature evergreen trees. I grabbed one off the bottom and brought the entire stack tumbling to the floor. “Whoops
!” Bending to pick up the trees, I slammed my butt into the opposing shelf, scattering more boxes.
This broke Arlo’s paralysis. He came dashing up the aisle, but stopped short as I straightened up again.
“Sorry,” I repeated, waving my hands at the mess. “Maybe I’d better leave this for you, huh?”
“What do you want?” Arlo said. He had a high voice, and sounded like he might break down crying at any moment.
“Well like I said, I need a birthday present for my brother. I mean, between you and me, he’s been kind of a shit lately, so it’s not like he actually deserves anything, but lucky for him I’m not the type to hold a grudge…Anyway, this last year he’s gotten into the whole toy-train thing, so I wanted to get him some stuff.”
“What kind of trains?”
Reverting to stupid-chick mode: “Oh, you know, the kind with wheels?”
“What scale?”
“Scale?”
“HO? O? N? Z?”
“You see, this is why I had to come to a brick-and-mortar store instead of just buying off the Internet. I have no idea what you just said.”
“The scale of the trains. HO is 1:87. O is—”
“One to eighty-seven what?”
“It’s a size ratio. HO-scale model trains are one eighty-seventh the size of real trains.”
“Oh…Well, I’m not sure. I know the trains he’s got are small, but I’ll be honest, I was never that good with fractions…What scale are those?” I raised my arm to point; Arlo ducked sideways as if my finger were the tip of a spear, which gave me an opening to move past him. I walked up to the train layout. “Yeah, these look about right…” One train was approaching a bridge near the edge of town; I plucked the locomotive from the track, sending half a dozen passenger cars plunging into a river gorge. “Is this HO size?”
Arlo’s cheeks were billowing in and out, and he’d just about bitten his lower lip off. “Sorry,” I said again. “This is the right size, though, I’m almost sure…Do you have any like this?” Unable to speak, Arlo gestured to a nearby display case—and immediately regretted it.
The display case was locked, but by jiggling the glass doors I managed to knock over a couple of the train cars inside. I turned to Arlo: “Could you open this up for—”